Entries in 3-D
(23)

Gilt City contest to see IF/THEN the wickedly talented one and only Idina Menzel's new Broadway showThe Wire is documenting the Kevin Spacey / Rob Ford feudInstagram Madonna dresses up as Daenerys Targaryen, Mother of DragonsComing Soon 3D retrofitting continues for animated films and The Incredibles and Ratatouille are in processi09 another "Let it Go" cover (they never end) this time using famous Disney cartoon voices

Cinema Blend rumors circulating that Halle Berry has been cut from X-Men Days of Future Past. Less bad wigs in a movie is always a plusIn Contention Guy Lodge on the winners of the Miami Film Festival includeing the Brazilian thriller A Wolf at the Door. Could it be their Oscar submission this year?Variety talks to Scarlett Johansson about Woody Allen and like Cate Blanchett she's level-headed about it

Ongoing ControversyFelicia Day is upset, like we are, about the casting of a white actress as Tiger Lily though I'm linking up to this because even in the pro-ethnic casting majority people keep perpetuating the notion that it would be a risk and no such famous actors exist because they don't get the opportunities and in all of this so few people ever mention the fact that there IS a Native American actress who is beautiful, not completely obscure, and the right age for it who has already carried a movie. How can people have forgotten Q'Orianka Kilcher from The New World this quickly? She is 24 and talented and beautiful and this is ridiculous. Obviously I missed my calling to be a casting director and slap sense into everyone.

I had already posted this on Twitter but just to remind everyone this is the movie she starred in and this is what she looks like now.

Q'Orianka in The New World (2005) and last year at an Oscar Party

In DevelopmentVariety because there hasn't been enough film and television related to Silence of the Lambs, a new possible biopic of a psychiatrist who treated the man who inspired Buffalo Bill Variety casting on Greta Gerwig's sitcom continues. Adorable Nicholas D'Agosto from Masters of Sex on boardComing Soon it's tough to keep track of Clint Eastwood's projects but after Jersey Boys he's doing American Sniper and it looks like Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller will star as man and wife in the true story about a legendary Navy SEAL.Empire Paul Feig (Bridesmaids, The Heat) is working on an original film musical !Cinema Blend Jon Hamm and Zach Galifanakis will headline the comedy Keeping up with the Joneses about a suburban couple whose neighbors are undercover agents. No word yet on the casting of the wives

And FYI... our own Amir Soltani is launching a new podcast called "Hello Cinema" with a focus on Iranian Cinema. Here's the teaser...

Avant-garde cinema isn’t for all audiences. The Girl from Nagasaki proves that it’s not for all directors, either. For whatever virtues Michel Conte has as an artist and a photographer (of which I am unfamiliar), filmmaking may not be of the same league. His debut feature, co-directed alongside his wife Ayako Yoshida, is a wild re-interpretation of Puccini’s famed Japanese-set opera, Madame Butterfly that dissolves into an assault of seemingly meaningless imagery; an experimental, visually symphonic and unfortunately misjudged piece of cinema.

Taking the story of Cio-Cio San and her breakdown at the absence of her American soldier husband and father of her child, Conte’s film at least fails while attempting something bizarrely different. Sadly, in his effort to turn the table on the conventions of narrative film, he has crafted a sort of Frankenstein’s Monster with bits and pieces grafted from the likes of Peter Greenaway, Tarsem Singh and Alejandro Jodorowsky and yet which lacks the profound power found in those artists’ works and compositions. Including crucifixion and BDSM fetish imagery, performance art and meta stylisation, it can’t help but feel like a confused hodge-podge of ideas that never form into a compelling whole.

Beginning with what appears to be a (admittedly impressive) visual effects company demo-reel of the explosion of the nuclear bomb over Nagasaki, it’s worth it as a work of intriguing technological ideas – and in 3D no less – but Conte falls too often into the sort of ridiculous embellishments that people mock experimental cinema for. I’m not sure what the director was trying to say with repetitive sequences of Geisha women rolling around in slick paint, but I assume he got the idea from a fashion photography layout. At the opposite end, a sequence involving David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” is particularly laughable for its bonkers and obvious use of symbolism. By the time Cio-Cio’s descent into mental breakdown occurs in the third act there is little to distinguish it from the rest of the movie.

Unlike some of the giants of avant-garde cinema like Luis Buñuel’s kinetic and disturbing Un Chien Andelou, Bruce Conner’s own nuclear bomb montage Crossroads, or Sidney Peterson’s The Petrified Dog, Conte’s film wears out its welcome all to quickly around the time Christopher Lee (!!) emerges amidst a dinner party of faceless Japanese geisha mannequins. The images, some intoxicating and beautiful, rarely feel as if they hold any weight or new insight into the tragic operatic tale. I’ve had Malcolm McLaren’s delicious 1984 “Madame Butterfly” in my head ever since seeing it, and at only six minutes long it still proves to be a radically more satisfying twist on the Puccuni original than The Girl from Nagasaki.

Grade:C-Distribution: Unlikely, although even whilst disliking the film I would applaud anybody for taking it on board.

Mickey Mouse is up for his first gold in agesTim here. Having already looked at the newly-minted Best Animated Feature Oscar nominees, let's turn for a little bit towards that category's older, smaller sibling, Best Short Subject - Animated. We already briefly discussed these films back when the 10-title shortlist was announced, but now that it has been whittled down to five, let's take a more in-depth look at each of them.

Feral (Daniel Sousa and Dan Golden)For solely aesthetic purposes, this would be my favorite of the nominees. It's a simple enough story: a boy raised by wolves is brought back to civilization and has a hard time of it. The greatness lies in the marriage of that scenario with rough impressionistic images, some which look like extra-bleak newspaper comics, some which look like somebody was trying a sheet of paper apart using a pencil.

It's the most distinctive of the five by far, looking handcrafted because it so emphatically is: some of the images are drawn on computer, some are hand-painted, but they all have a desperate crudeness that lacks the polish of most animation, and this couldn't be a better fit for the material. It's available to rent for $1 on Vimeo.

After a week break in which the team was on separate coasts, Nathaniel reunites with Nick, Katey and Joe to discuss Matthew McConaughey & Jared Leto's Oscar-seeking duet in Dallas Buyers Club.

That's the focus but we also make time for talking about previously tweeted adventures: Nathaniel's AFI celebrity encounters (including Saving Mr Banks) and Joe's Doc NY screenings (We Steal Secrets and We Always Lie to Strangers). We chat about Megan Ellison at Annapurna, James Schamus's departure at Focus, and Katey and Joe's new jobs at Vanity Fair and The Atlantic Wire. Joe tries to start a fight between Nick and Katey about Ron Howard's Rush.

Finally we talk about the unloved (this year) Best Animated Feature category and The Croods. And we reveal what we've been watching as far as older films go: Danny Kaye in The Court Jester, Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor, Robert Altman's The Last Goodbye, the hard-to-find classic Killer of Sheep, and Carol Kane in Hester Street.

Movie City News Gurus of Gold update post TIFF/TellurideMind of a Suspicious Kind Jordan on Denis Villeneuve's PrisonersAV Club Joss Whedon airlifted in to punch up Thor: The Dark World. (awesome photoshop) Deadline Matt Bomer set to play Montgomery Clift... hmmm. But I have to say this article sounds like it was written by someone who has a very vague inkling of Clift, like a Wikipedia inkling. Seriously read it. It reads that generic.

In Contention Cate Blanchett to make her directorial debut with The Dinner, based on Herman Koch's bestseller/Film that Labor Day poster I was talking 'bout the other day finally made it onlineVariety four people will be honored by the Cinematography guild including Kris Tapley. Congrats, Kris Awards Daily the US trailer for Blue is the Warmest Colour i09 8 ways to make a female led superhero movie work Slant Magazine excellent piece on "the IMAX cancer" and the rerelease of The Wizard of Oz... only not the one you know. Happy Nice Time People Embarassing Person Glenn Beck is really upset about the possible movie about Woodrow Wilson that Leonardo DiCaprio might possibly be starring in

Have you heard that Baz Luhrmann wants to convert Moulin Rouge! to 3D? On principal we should tsk tsk this because sensible people hate what 3-D hath wrought (ticket price inflation and obsessive preferencing of new technology rather than obsessive quality control) but the very best and only great thing about the 3-D movement is the rare opportunity it has afforded us the chance to see beloved movies back on the big screen -- yay Jurassic Park -- albeit in bastardized form.

But still. Consider...

"She is mine!"

Moulin Rouge! is such a Spectacular! Spectacular! Tiered Cake of Visual Goodies that it could surely handle yet one more layer of frosting. And the stage craft on "Hindi Sad Diamonds" was already desperately trying to go 3-D to begin with.

I'm making excuses for 3-D because any chance to see it on the big screen again is welcome. I'd be there with bells on and absinthe in hand. That five times during its initial release was wondrous and here's to number six. Not that on should hold one's breath waiting for Baz Luhrmann to follow through or get back to work. You know how he do inbetween features.